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Saturday, August 29, 2015

The Hungry Giant of the Tundra by Teri Sloat

Genre: Trickery / Folktale / Animals / Yupik / Giants

Year Published: 1993

Year Read: 2015

Publisher: Dutton Children’s Books

It is rare that I read folktales from Yupik, so when I
stumbled upon a book called “The Hungry
Giant of the Tundra,” I just had to see for myself how this story would
turn out and man was I extremely impressed with this story!

The story starts out with a group of children playing across
the fields in a village far to the north.Even though the children were supposed to run home before the big giant
A· ka· gua ·gan ·kak came across the tundra, the children were having so much
fun that they decided not to go back to their homes and continued playing in
the fields.Unfortunately, A· ka· gua
·gan ·kak manages to catch up to the children and ended up grabbing them and is
about to eat them when he realized that he forgot his knife.So, he put the children into his trousers and
left them in a tree while he went home to get his knife.It was then that the children saw a chickadee
and they begged the chickadee to help them.

Can the chickadee and the crane save the children from the giant?

Read this book to find out!

Wow! I must admit that I was quite impressed with this book
since I have never read a folktale from Yupik before!Teri
Sloat has done an excellent job at retelling this ancient folktale from
Yupik as the story is interesting and intense as I felt scared for the children
and I wanted to see how they will get away from the giant in this story.I was also impressed with how the crane and
the chickadee helped out the children with the chickadee using its strong beak
to carry the trousers with the children inside out of harm’s way and the crane
stretching its long legs to get the children across the river.It reminded me of other folktales where the
main character receives help from other characters who possess special powers
that can easily be used to help the main character out of their
predicament.Robert and Teri Sloat’s artwork is truly amazing as I loved the
Yupik influenced artwork and I thought that the giant look quite appropriate
for the part of being menacing yet being dimwitted at the same time.I especially loved the scene where the giant
took off his trousers and put the children inside them, since it was both
hilarious and surprising to see such an image pop up in a children’s book!

Parents should know that the giant might scare smaller
children, especially when it tried to eat the children.Parents might want to read this book first
before reading it to their children to see if they can handle the scenes with
the giant.

Overall, “The Hungry
Giant of the Tundra” is a fantastic book that children who love books about
giants should definitely check out!I
would recommend this book to children ages five and up since the images of the
giant might scare smaller children.

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Hello! I'm Ronyell and anyone who wants to be my friend is free to become friends with me! Also, I love followers on my blog, since I have so many great things to talk about the various books I read from time to time. I love to read, exercise, sleep and surf on the internet, with reading being my most favorite activity.
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